Senate Stalling

December 23, 2001|Chicago Tribune

"The president is entitled to have at the top echelon of his administration people who share his views and are prepared to help him convert them into policy. Absent some grave moral or intellectual fault in a nominee, the Senate ought to respect the president's prerogative to pick his helpers."

Forgive us for quoting ourselves, but that was what a Chicago Tribune editorial had to say in 1997 -- criticizing GOP efforts to kill President Bill Clinton's nomination of Bill Lann Lee to be assistant attorney general for civil rights. Senate Democrats agreed with us back then. But four years later, they think they have a duty to spare the nation an executive branch official whose chief sin is that he thinks like President Bush rather than like the AFL-CIO.

The nomination of Eugene Scalia to be solicitor at the Department of Labor, its third-highest post, has been collecting dust for seven months, and if Democratic leader Tom Daschle has his way, it may wait forever. Though a committee approved Scalia in October, his nomination has yet to make it onto the docket.

Daschle effectively threatened a filibuster to block the nomination. The only explanation for why he resists an up-or-down vote is that he would lose. The same Daschle who complained bitterly about Republican efforts to block Bill Lann Lee's appointment is now resorting to the same sort of tactics.

Scalia, an experienced capital labor attorney, had the nerve to skewer Clinton administration regulations dealing with ergonomic injuries in the workplace.

The AFL-CIO says this proves he's an enemy of working people. In fact, plenty of experts on the subject raised similar objections. And the rules' high cost and questionable value were so obvious that the House and Senate voted to repeal them.

Of course there's one other reason Democrats might want to deep-six the nomination of Scalia: His father, Antonin, was one of the five Supreme Court justices who formed the majority in the case of Bush vs. Gore. Taking it out on his son would extract some revenge.

Whether the motive is ideology or vengeance, the opposition is impossible to justify.